Word: incest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This was not mere celebrity dish; this was rancid food for thought. The clash raised troubling questions for every nouveau Brady Bunch family, every jerry-built alliance of siblings who are more like classmates and parents who may be only lovers. What is incest? How affectionate can a man be to those in his care? What is a father? How much distance must he put between himself and his unofficial children before he is free to date one of them...
...relationship shades into indecency with the claim by Soon-Yi's siblings that Allen has been a father figure to the entire Farrow brood ever since Soon-Yi was a preteen. Isn't that bringing sex a little too close to home, close , enough to raise the issue of incest...
...rationale: that inbreeding drains the gene pool, greatly increasing the chances of mental and physical defects in offspring. But modern geneticists have found that such dangers are overstated; it would take generations of inbreeding for such problems to surface regularly. A more important reason for the taboo is cultural: incest has been banned to preserve family harmony by keeping disruptive rivalries and jealousies at bay. It has also helped to strengthen kinship clans; by forcing members to marry outside the group, the clan expands its wealth and allies...
Today the most significant damage from incest is psychological. The heart of a family, say experts, is not the bloodline but the emotional connection. "Proper human growth involves gradually separating emotionally from your family so that you can go off and start one of your own," stresses child therapist Carole West of Beverly Hills, California. "Incest disrupts that process...
...surge in nontraditional families increases the risk of disruption. "There are more incidents of incest reported in stepfamilies than in biological families," observes Lynn Reynolds of the Institute Against Social Violence, in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Adopted children may be particularly vulnerable; no matter how well they are treated by their adoptive families, they frequently struggle with feelings of abandonment by their biological parents...